Roster discrepencies between PFR and Neft/Cohen Encyclopedia

[Bryan]

Fred Besana is drafted by the Bills in 1977. He is on the active roster but does not appear in any of the games that season. Neft/Cohen Encyclopedia includes Besana in their listing of the 1977 Buffalo Bills roster. Pro Football Reference does not have any record of Besana being an NFL player. Is one source 'correct' in this instance? Is it just semantics? If Neft/Cohen is 'correct', is there any push to have this information added to PFR?

[TanksAndSpartans]

I can see the argument on both sides of this case and I'm not sure, but I can say I got a birthdate changed by PFR. It was over a year ago, so I don't remember all the details, but I believe there was a link to request corrections and soon after I submitted I received an email that a ticket had been opened and not long after I received an email saying the change was made.

[Mark L. Ford]

Fred Besana is drafted by the Bills in 1977. He is on the active roster but does not appear in any of the games that season. Neft/Cohen Encyclopedia includes Besana in their listing of the 1977 Buffalo Bills roster. Pro Football Reference does not have any record of Besana being an NFL player. Is one source 'correct' in this instance? Is it just semantics? If Neft/Cohen is 'correct', is there any push to have this information added to PFR?

Most likely, it IS semantics. I may be wrong, but my recollection is that the Neft/Cohen book has gone by whether someone was among the active roster players who suited up for a game at any point in a given season, regardless of whether they were actually put into the game; whereas PFR goes by its game log of whether someone appeared on the field or not. I know that for the 1987 strike-shortened season, the Neft/Cohen rosters listed the replacement players (with a designation) for the teams, not all of whom saw action.

[Rupert Patrick]

If you can prove your point with screenshots from gamebooks or flipcards and such, or pdfs of newspaper articles to the point where you might not be able to get him listed for all 14 games but for several of the games, it will at least open the door to get him put into the PFR database, and others might be able to come in behind you and fill in some of the other missing information. If the player is still alive and has proof that he was on the roster for 14 games, he might have evidence to prove his point. If you can track down a list of the 1977 league transactions, showing the date he was cut or waived from the Bills after the season, it would give credence to his being on the roster the entire season; one good source for this would be Pro Football Weekly magazine. I checked the 1978 Sporting News Guide and he does not appear on the 1978 Bills roster.

In Week 2, the Bills play the Broncos. The Broncos website have gamebooks and flipcards for virtually all of their games available on their website:

http://media.denverbroncos.com/section_ ... ion_id=139

When I clicked on the flipcard for the 9/25/77 Bills-Broncos game, I found that Besana (no. 11) was listed on the roster for the game as a QB.

http://media.denverbroncos.com/section_ ... ion_id=139

Checking thru my 1977 gamebooks, I have found the 9/18 Bills-Dolphins game, which you should be able to download at the site, has him listed as a DNP (Did Not Play) in the game but he is listed in parenthesis. The 9/25 Bills-Broncos games lists him as inactive. The 10/30 Bills-Seahawks gamebook has Besana listed in parenthesis. The 11/6 Bills-Patriots gamebook shows Besana as being inactive, and I think the parenthesis means he was inactive, because in the 11/20 Bills-Patriots gamebook has Besana's name in parenthesis with INAC. Besana was also listed as inactive in the 11/28 Bills-Raiders gamebook. Besana was listed in the 12/18 Bills-Dolphin gamebook as inactive.

There does seem to be video available for the network broadcasts of the 10/16 Bills-Falcons game, along with the 12/4 Bills-Redskins game if you want to review those and see if you can spot him on the sideline.

However, in 1977, Joe Ferguson threw every pass for the Bills except one that Simpson threw. This doesn't mean that Ferguson was behind center every single play. The Denver flipcard lists Besana as the third-string QB after Ferguson and Ken Johnson. It is possible that the Bills kept Besana on the inactive list as insurance in case Ferguson was injured, but it never happened. I know the NFL has some special rules concerning third-strong QB's, and I wonder if the roster rules back in 1977 allowed teams to carry a third-string QB as inactive to free up a roster spot.

From what I have seen, it seems he never even suited up and went out the tunnel before a regular season game. For that reason, I think Pro-Football-Refrence.com may be correct in not listing him.

I have made numerous changes to the PFR site, usually in field goal distances in games but also in some of their scoring summaries where they have things mixed up.

[Bryan]

Most likely, it IS semantics. I may be wrong, but my recollection is that the Neft/Cohen book has gone by whether someone was among the active roster players who suited up for a game at any point in a given season, regardless of whether they were actually put into the game; whereas PFR goes by its game log of whether someone appeared on the field or not. I know that for the 1987 strike-shortened season, the Neft/Cohen rosters listed the replacement players (with a designation) for the teams, not all of whom saw action.

Thanks.

[Bryan]

If you can prove your point with screenshots from gamebooks or flipcards and such

But wouldn't the Neft/Cohen Encyclopedia be the 'proof' in this instance? I assume they did the legwork prior to publishing their material. Just a simple click of Besana's Wikipedia page says "He was active for two games in 1977 and two games in 1978, before being released by the Giants on August 13, 1979", with a newspaper article link stating the Bills activate Besana for a 12/11/77 game against the Jets while de-activating Greg Morton.

My follow-up question would be "Does PFR intentionally limit their team rosters to players who appeared in games, or is that the result because they don't have information regarding active players who don't appear in games?", which isn't really appropriate for the PFRA forum. I guess the more appropriate question for PFRA would be "What is the most accurate way to list a roster...all players who spent time on the active roster, or all players who appeared in a game?"

[Rupert Patrick]

If you can prove your point with screenshots from gamebooks or flipcards and such

But wouldn't the Neft/Cohen Encyclopedia be the 'proof' in this instance? I assume they did the legwork prior to publishing their material. Just a simple click of Besana's Wikipedia page says "He was active for two games in 1977 and two games in 1978, before being released by the Giants on August 13, 1979", with a newspaper article link stating the Bills activate Besana for a 12/11/77 game against the Jets while de-activating Greg Morton.

My follow-up question would be "Does PFR intentionally limit their team rosters to players who appeared in games, or is that the result because they don't have information regarding active players who don't appear in games?", which isn't really appropriate for the PFRA forum. I guess the more appropriate question for PFRA would be "What is the most accurate way to list a roster...all players who spent time on the active roster, or all players who appeared in a game?"

This is more of a question for those who have actually edited encyclopedias, guys like Ken Pullis or Tod Maher. I've always been of the opinion that the most recent encyclopedias are the most accurate, because errors that have been found have been corrected. Even then, I still found dozens of errors in Total Football, and it didn't take very long to start finding them. Perhaps one of them will chime in about how statistical and biographical information is compiled for the book. I know they don't have access to all of the gamebooks because they don't all exist. From those who I have chatted with over the years who do this kind of work (Ken Pullis, Pete Palmer, David Neft and others), I know the information in the encyclopedia is purchased, in one way or another. I know the guys at PFR.com don't get to post all of those stats on their site for free. At that point it comes down to where they got the information from, and how accurate it was. I don't know where Neft and Cohen got their stats from (Elias Sports Bureau is my guess), because I don't know if the 1977 official NFL Statistics Booklet had games played in it.

You might want to try contacting PFR.com and asking them in a general way if they credits games to a person who is on the 53-man roster but is inactive all season:

http://media.denverbroncos.com/section_ ... ion_id=139

[Jay Z]

Neft & Cohen were the outlier in listing DNPs, and they only did it for football. They did list players who were considered "major leaguers" and missed seasons due to illness or injury. Rico Carty would be an example in baseball. On Baseball Reference there is a gray line indicating missing seasons for Carty, but no other explanation. PFR does not even have the gray line for missing seasons.

I don't think any of the baseball encyclopedias accounted for DNPs. Bill Sharman was a famous one, on the Dodgers at the end of the 1951 season but never played. He has never been listed in any encyclopedia. Baseball Reference has Sharman's minor league stats now, but no notation that he was on the Brooklyn Dodgers' roster.

There are a fair number of DNPs through the 1970s. Besana was exceptional in that he never played, and had two DNP seasons.

If you want an alternate source, there is NFL.com. You can look up historical players and their game logs back to 1970. If a player was active but DNP, he will have a 0 listed for the game in his game log. Players who were 0 for the season are included.

Two seasons in the 1970s were a little different. In 1977 the teams had a two man inactive list every week. It doesn't look like the NFL.com data is complete there. Besana was on the inactive list both in Week 1 and Week 6. In Week 1 he has a 0 listed and for Week 6 he has no line.

For 1973 there was a 7 man taxi squad, but moves were unlimited and they could be made up to the day before the game. This was an exception to prior seasons. As far as I know, NFL.com is accurate for 1973. I haven't checked everything. Players on the taxi squad would have no line listed for the weeks they were taxied.

[Rupert Patrick]

Two seasons in the 1970s were a little different. In 1977 the teams had a two man inactive list every week. It doesn't look like the NFL.com data is complete there. Besana was on the inactive list both in Week 1 and Week 6. In Week 1 he has a 0 listed and for Week 6 he has no line.

I spot-checked a few other game books from 1977 and they all indicated the inactive players. It is possible the NFL.com data is limited by the number of available game books.

[rhickok1109]

I've never understood the rationale for not including a player if he didn't actually play in a game. If he was under contract, getting paid, and on the official roster list for any period of time, he was a member of the team.